Introduction

Felicia Wilson was nauseated a lot last year while pregnant with daughter Abby, and “I needed any little thing to give me comfort,” she says. “When I wanted to relax and feel better, I’d find myself going to sit in her room. The more this happened, the more I realized I needed to do something about my own room.”

Felicia, 36; husband Dave, 41; and their son, Bobby, three, moved into their four-bedroom house in Charlottesville, Virginia, last July, when Felicia was six months pregnant. Before Abby was born, Felicia had set up the two kids’ rooms and managed to make them cheerful places. But when it came to her own room, the organizing principle, she says, was “Oh, here’s a lamp — put it wherever.” Every surface was strewn with something: framed photos, DVDs, Dave’s PlayStation gear. Add cold mint green walls and what Felicia calls the lack of any decor and her bedroom was, she says, “my least favorite room — when I wanted it to be my favorite.” The story had been the same in the Wilsons’ previous residences. “For six years,” she says, “we never had a bedroom that was a serene place to sit and just enjoy.”

There was one other small thing: With the only closet and both dressers allotted to Felicia (“I felt a little guilty,” she says), Dave had nowhere to put his clothes. Every morning after showering, he’d go to a downstairs bedroom to change. “Felicia would have to remind me not to go down in my underwear when we had overnight guests,” he says.

Clearly, something had to be done.